How to Practice Guitar Without Constantly Stopping Your Lesson
Pictured: Elmore founder James Levin with Swedish guitarist Ola Englund of The Haunted and Feared, founder of Solar Guitars and a YouTube creator with close to a million subscribers, at The NAMM Show in Anaheim.
If you learn guitar from videos, you know the routine. Play a few notes. Let go of the neck. Reach for the mouse. Drag the timeline back. Miss the spot. Try again. Get your hands back into position. By the time you are ready to play, the moment is gone.
It feels like a small annoyance, but over a full practice session it adds up to a real obstacle. Here is why constant stopping slows you down, and what you can do about it.
Why constant interruptions hurt your progress
It steals practice time
Every pause, rewind and speed change takes a few seconds of fumbling. If you stop to control the video 40 or 50 times in a session, which is very normal when you are learning something new, you can lose several minutes of actual playing. Worse, those are the minutes that matter most, right in the middle of working on something difficult.
It breaks the repetition loop
Muscle memory is built by repeating a movement correctly, many times, in close succession. Each time you take your hands off the guitar, you break that chain. Your fretting hand has to find the shape again, your picking hand has to find the string again, and the repetition starts over. We explain more about this in Grooving with Muscle Memory.
It breaks your concentration
Learning requires focus. Switching between playing and operating a device pulls your attention away from your hands and your ears. The more often it happens, the harder it is to get into a state of focused practice.
It makes practice frustrating
Frustration is one of the main reasons people give up on guitar. When every session involves a constant battle with the video controls, practice stops being fun.
Five ways to stop stopping
1. Learn in small chunks
Watch a short section, a few seconds or one bar at a time, then practice it several times before moving on. Smaller chunks mean fewer trips back to the controls for each thing you learn.
2. Slow the video down first
If you set the speed before you start, you will not need to rewind as often to catch what the teacher is doing. See How to Slow Down Guitar Lessons Without Changing Their Pitch.
3. Use chapters, loops and keyboard shortcuts
Many lesson platforms let you loop a section so it repeats automatically. On YouTube, keyboard shortcuts (K to pause, J to jump back 10 seconds, arrow keys for 5 seconds) are faster than dragging the timeline. These help, but you still have to take a hand off the guitar.
4. Practice the part away from the video
Once you have the notes, turn the video off and play the part on your own with a metronome. Come back to the video only to check your work.
5. Control the lesson with your foot
The most direct fix is to move the controls somewhere other than your hands. Drummers, organists and pedal steel players use their feet all the time, and guitarists already use them for effects. Your feet are the obvious place for lesson controls too.
How the Elmore Pedal solves it
The Elmore Pedal is a wireless Bluetooth foot pedal built specifically for learning from video. With a tap of your toe, you can:
- Play and pause
- Rewind and fast forward
- Slow down and speed up
It pairs with an iPad, iPhone, Mac or PC and works through the free Elmore Pedal Utility browser extension with YouTube and learning platforms such as TrueFire and ArtistWorks. There is no app to learn and nothing to plug into your guitar or amp. It is not an effects pedal and does not change your tone. It is a hands-free remote for your lessons, with a rechargeable battery.
The result is a practice session where your hands never leave the instrument. You can rewind the same three seconds ten times in a row, slow down the tricky part, and pick up right where you left off, all without breaking your position or your focus.
What an uninterrupted session looks like
- Tune up and set the video to a comfortable speed.
- Watch the first phrase, then tap to pause and play it.
- Tap to rewind a few seconds, listen again, play again.
- When it is clean, tap to speed it up slightly.
- Tap play and move to the next phrase.
At no point do you reach for the screen. That is how you keep the repetition loop intact, and it is the reason the Elmore Pedal is called the learning pedal.
Frequently asked questions
How can I practice guitar without stopping the video?
Learn in short chunks, slow the video down before you start, and use a hands-free foot controller such as the Elmore Pedal so you can pause, rewind and change speed without taking your hands off the guitar.
Is there a foot pedal to control YouTube?
Yes. The Elmore Pedal is a Bluetooth foot pedal that controls YouTube and other learning sites on iPad, iPhone, Mac and PC through a free browser extension.
Does the Elmore Pedal work with an iPad?
Yes. It works on iPad and iPhone through the Elmore Pedal Utility Safari extension, and on Mac and PC through the Chrome extension. It does not currently support Android.
Is the Elmore Pedal a guitar effects pedal?
No. It does not touch your tone at all. It is a hands-free remote for controlling lesson videos on your other devices.